101 Things I Don’t Know How To Teach My Son (But Wish I Could) #15 Unprecedented

One of the most bizarre accusations that politicians will level at one another is that their actions are unprecedented.

Hmmm.

That’s kind of a weird accusation, because while it sounds impressive it only means something has been done that hasn’t been done before.

Einstein’s theories were unprecedented. What google has done, and facilitates others to do, is unprecedented.

Many economic and financial numbers are typically going to be unprecedented, but that’s only because of the way they’re calculated. When you’ve got inflation and population growth the indicators that use them will keep going up. The stock market is a notorious example of this. Saying the stock market has reached a “record high” is as remarkable as saying our country has reached an unprecedented age.

The evil that people do to each other is not, unfortunately, unprecedented. (The scale of it may be; the technology used changes ).

I hope much of what you do is unprecedented. Maybe if you’re lucky people will try to criticize you for it.